Bloody U.S Extreme Right Nut-Cases

A comment by what was clearly one of the American right-wing nut-jobs on a Times article really made me just so-bloody-frustrated! Look for someone called Fred Netz on these two articles: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6951874.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6952051.eceI get so bloody frustrated with their dogmatic view of the world. Here is my argument.

• “The Left” – apparently, anyone who isn’t extremely right-wing is a leftie. Take Barack Obama. Right-wingers view him as a ‘socialist’ set out to ‘ruin America’. However, if he was up for election in any sensible country, most people would see that he is actually right-wing – as almost all U.S politicians are (if you’re using a sensible left – right spectrum). According to right-wingers, all people on ‘the left’ are ‘Communists’ in the style of Karl Marx. This is simply not true. Take Obama’s healthcare plan – he is actually doing it out of a right-wing agenda to save money by making the unnecessarily complicated current system simpler and so cheaper, not to some ‘mad’ plan to create an NHS-style system (even though the NHS works very well – the UK is 22nd for life expectancy while the U.S is 38th: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_United_Nations_.28average_for_the_2005-2010_period.29). Having an NHS-type system, I suspect, would save even more money.
• “Socialism” – apparently, ‘socialist’ actually means ‘Marxist’ – to right-wingers, at least. Socialism is merely the idea that the state should help the poor if they need it. Almost all socialist parties have subscribed to this, not some Marxist idea of nationalisation of industry e.t.c In fact, these right-wingers should like this, as does not the Bible say that you should help the poor and unfortunate? Some even say that socialism’s routes can be traced back to Jesus and Christianity.
• “Left-wing media” – apparently, every news channel that doesn’t do what Fox News does, is left-wing. Anybody who dislikes the Republican Party or even likes it but still criticises is a socialist and should be shot as a traitor. Or something. On a side note, Fox News isn’t a news channel – it’s the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. If it was broadcast anywhere else it would be told that it shouldn’t present itself as a news channel because it would be considered grossly misleading to viewers. But that’s by-the-by.”Liberals” – according to right-wingers, like ‘lefties’ and ‘socialism’, ‘liberals’ and ‘liberalism’ is the same as Marxism, and is fundamentally un-American. Yet somehow, the Founding Fathers, some of the greatest liberals ever, are not described in this way. Isn’t that ironic? If the Founding Fathers were around today they’d be criticised for being Marxist traitors, since, to right-wingers, the idea that “all men should be equal” is a Marxist idea. They’d have it that the constitution read “All men were created unequal, and if you don’t like that you are not an American and should be deported immediately”.
• “The state”. According to right-wingers, we shouldn’t have a state at all, so we can all be slaves to the big industrialists, who’d pay people practically nothing. Of course, this would quickly collapse when people find they don’t have enough money to buy food, and all starve to death, or die of horrible diseases because there is no state to help them. We need the state, otherwise the world would fall into anarchy.

Rant over.